The RamSan-440, TMS' thirteenth generation
solid state disk, is simply the most advanced SSD on the market today.
Its fast DDR RAM storage is ideal for storing performance-demanding
data and accelerating application performance. In fact, the RamSan-440
is The World's Fastest Storage�. No RAID, no cache, or other solid
state disk is capable of the raw performance offered by the
RamSan-440.

The RamSan-440 raises the bar for
shutdown and restore as well. It is the first SSD unit to use Flash
memory as the backup media. This dramatically decreases the amount of
time it takes to back up the data in the event of power loss. It also
dramatically increases the recovery and start up times.

RamSan-440 highlights:

4.5 Gigabytes per Second

600,000 IOPS

Up to 512 GB Storage

350-SEC Restore/Backup

Fibre Channel or Infiniband

Installation and Management

TMS� numerous customers have seen real
world increases from 2x to 25x simply by installing a single RamSan.
The RamSan440 can accelerate numerous applications across industries.
It is best known for drastic performance gains in OLTP, batch
processing, and other intensive operations. The RamSan plugs into
servers or fabrics through basic Fibre Channel. It appears simply as a
very, very fast disk to the network, able to act as any disk or
storage system might.

Highly Reliable Storage

There is no tradeoff in reliability for
performance. The RamSan 440 includes RAIDed RAM boards for primary
storage, hot swappable power supplies, and three independent internal
batteries (N+1) to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure
will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures to
RAID protected Flash memory modules. Redundant cooling fans and
redundant data ports are also part of the sophisticated design.

The RamSan-440 protects both the primary storage (RAM) and the backup
storage media (Flash) by using RAIDed configurations. The RamSan 440
protects the primary RAM storage media with RAIDed RAM-boards. As part
of the RAID protection for each bank of memory there is one set of
memory cards that store parity data.

The RamSan 440 protects the Flash storage media with RAIDed Flash
memory modules. If a Flash memory module fails, a parity module will
provide data protection. The Flash memory modules are used when the
RamSan loses power; the data residing on the RAM is transferred to the
Flash memory so that data is not lost. By using RAIDed Flash memory
modules, the data is protected from a Flash module failure during a
power loss.
The RamSan 440 takes reliability even further by implementing IBM
Chipkill technology. Standard error correcting code (ECC)
implementations correct single-bit data errors in memory chips but
cannot correct the multi-bit errors that can result in data integrity
issues. Chipkill technology allows a memory system to correct a
multi-bit failure up to and including a total chip failure. Combining
Chipkill and RAIDed memory boards brings unprecedented memory
protection for a SSD. The RamSan 440 has 648GBs of raw memory capacity
that is presented as 512 GBs of usable capacity after these protection
levels. All solid state disks can correct a single bit error before
sending data to the server as a part of their ECC protection.

Soft Error Scrubbing

The RamSan 440, however, goes a step further by scrubbing; re-writing
the corrected data to memory and then verifying the re-write to
determine if a memory chip has a failure (a hard error) or if
radiation transients caused the single bit error (a soft error).
Systems that do not scrub single bit memory errors will either a)
report errors to a system log that will eventually encourage
replacement of a memory board or b) hide these errors, thus leaving a
potentially unsafe memory board in the system. Research on this topic
suggests that 90% of single bit errors are soft errors. In these
cases, the RamSan-440 will correct the error through the scrubbing
process and prevent unnecessary downtime to replace the memory board.

Interoperability

The RamSan-440 is designed to look like
a disk to the network. Therefore, it is highly interoperable and works
in virtually any enterprise environment. It is installed in numerous
environments, including Apple OS X, AIX, Solaris, Linux, and Windows.
Hardware from Fibre Channel and InfiniBand vendors including Cisco,
Emulex, Brocade, McData, Mellanox, QLogic, LSI Logic, and ATTO easily
interoperates with the RamSan

Active Backup and Chipkill
Technology:

The Newest Innovations in SSD
Exclusive to the RamSan is Active Backup� software. Other SSDs and
cache system can only "destage" data from RAM to backup disks once
power is already lost. This means that data is never backed up during
normal operation and the time-to-complete-backup after power loss is
unacceptably long. A RamSan-300 with Active Backup can continuously
backup data on RAM to the internal backup hard disks without impacting
performance. This means in an emergency situation, data is anywhere
from 60-100% on the backup hard drives already.